A year after leading the then-No. 7 Oregon men to the Pacific-10 Conference championship over the then No. 5-Stanford Cardinal, junior Galen Rupp is ready to repeat the feat.
Rupp made it clear that the top-ranked Ducks expect to compete for, if not win, another Pac-10 title this Saturday at Trysting Tree Golf Course in Corvallis. “I think obviously that’s the goal going in,” he said. “We’d be disappointed to come back with anything less than first.”
Rupp hasn’t raced since placing 11th in the World Championships’ 10,000 meter final at the end of August, but is ready to start his cross country season with a bang.
“I’m going in there with the full intention of running to win,” he said. He expects teammate Shadrack Kiptoo-Biwott, the top Duck at the Dellinger Invitational in September, to be there with him the whole way.
“I’m going to try to work with Shadrack up front and hopefully we’ll both be able to finish really high.”
Even though Rupp and the Ducks are heavy favorites, that doesn’t mean they don’t expect a challenge from other teams, including No. 8 California, No. 15 Stanford, No. 19 UCLA and No. 25 Arizona State.
“There’s some good teams there,” Rupp said. “It’s definitely going to be a tough meet.”
Coach Vin Lananna, a veteran of more than a dozen Pac-10 meets as coach at Stanford and Oregon, agreed.
“We’ll hopefully be able to successfully defend that title, but I do think it will be a close meet,” he said. “I think the way the Pac-10s is set up, we have such a small number of athletes in the event that it runs very differently than a major championship event.”
While he agreed that the Oregon men are probably the meet favorites, he also said that it will be tough for the women, fourth last year, to win.
“If you look at it realistically, Stanford on the women’s side is really a tough team for us to beat,” he said. “They’re defending champions … and I think they’ll be tough for us to beat this year, but I think we’ll give it a run.”
The Cardinal, two-time defending NCAA champions and the unanimous No. 1 team in the coaches’ poll, are led by Arianna Lambie, the 2005 and 2006 Pac-10 cross country individual champion, and Teresa McWalters, twice a top-five Pac-10 finisher.
Despite Stanford’s strength and the depth of the rest of the conference – four top-10 teams will race in Corvallis- the Oregon women aren’t worried.
Sophomore Nicole Blood, the Dellinger Invitational champion this year, said they’re not going to focus on beating Stanford or anyone else, and just need to focus on their own races. “We’re just going to run like we did at Dellinger and these past few meets, just try not to think of it as a huge race, just go in there like we do any other race,” she said.
But don’t think the Ducks don’t believe they have a chance to win.
Zoe Nelson, the top Duck at the Pac-10 championships last year, said, “I think we’re capable of it with this group.”
“We have a shot at a lot of things right now,” Blood said.
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